Mann Co. Beta Maps - Early Access

Have you ever wanted to construct battle arenas where mercenaries fight to the death over important global issues, but found you would rather shoot people in those arenas instead of riveting things that need riveted? We’ve got a position for you! Now is your chance to boss around the little guy as you stand on the ground floor of cutting edge environment construction!

We need volunteers that are capable of putting these spaces through the wringer. We want to make sure they stand the test of time for future generations of mercenaries, so they may also enjoy the simple things in life, such as detonating explosive ordinance, setting men on fire and conga dancing.

This is your chance to help guide the direction of TF2. You will get to participate in the development process as we cycle through different iterations of gameplay, based on your feedback.

FAQ:

How do I participate?

Click on Play Multiplayer, enable Play Beta Maps checkbox, and then choose a mode to play.

Why are you running a maps Beta?

We would like to include the community early in the development process to gather feedback as we try variations in the map layout and game play mechanics.

What sorts of things can I do to help the development process?

Continually playing the maps is one of the biggest ways you can help us develop. Having servers full of users interacting with each other quickly points out problems with the gameplay that need to be addressed.

How do I submit feedback?

To help gather feedback, send us links to discussions happening on your favorite community forum. Or you can write us directly to express your thoughts. We will also be joining servers to play alongside you, shooting down enemies for the greater benefit of the team.

Will the maps be changing a lot?

Yes. There will be times when a change will be needed. That change may be as small as moving a health kit to a different room or it may be a larger change, such as reworking an entire section of the layout.

Are the game mode rules final?

No. We may see drastic swings in rule sets to make comparisons to previous versions. We may change the rule set one update only to find the previous iteration was better.

Are there Beta map servers? Can we host our own?

Yes and Yes. We're running a set of official Valve Beta servers using quick play matchmaking. Community server owners are welcome to host beta maps.

The new gamemode is mirrored where both teams try to kill enemy robots (with a control-point unlock style order). After you kill all three stages of robots it resets a timer to spawn more. The robots drop something which adds to your score. You play to a certain score (something like 300).

If I wanted to prepare the TF2 community for different levels of detailing, gameplay, and level design to pave the way for a map workshop or community map testing, then I don't think I could do a better job than what they've just released. You've got custom game modes, dev textures, shitty doors and incomplete payload explosions, and blocky, boring areas as well. The payload map especially I am skeptical of.

The feedback is a bit off, needs effort from players that they may not bother to take.
Maybe a textbox for comments between respawns? Or even better, during loading of the next map.

Click to expand...

An officialized version of the Feedback plugin that involves pressing, like, one of the function keys (which ones are still free?) to bring up a GUI with a text box and radio buttons to pick whether you're leaving an annotation or a general comment, and puts an icon over your head so enemies will know to leave you alone. Only works on beta maps by default; servers can enable it on a per-map basis.

EDIT: I want to add some speculation: maybe this beta map-testing system is itself a beta--- for the future map workshop testing that will enable us to test our own custom maps on valve servers through quickplay! (please, Valve?)